Nigerian Scammer Who Tricked Payday Lender Of £3million Jailed For Six Years

A Nigerian man, Kelvin Okusanya, who is the mastermind behind a £3million Wonga scam which used the identities of thousands of innocent members of the public to withdraw cash has been jailed for six years. 

Kelvin 32, according to Daily Mail, was part of a gang which exploited the company's website algorithms to make more than 19,000 loan applications from April 2012 to June 2013 using the same password 'Bengali90'.

The cash was then laundered through hundreds of bank accounts by the fraudsters while the unsuspecting victims were left facing paying the one per cent a day interest payments. Okusanya was convicted of fraud after the Old Bailey heard he personally made 82 false applications involving 30 victims. 

The judge, Mr Recorder Sells QC, said: 'The names and details of wholly innocent members of the public were used to make fraudulent loan applications on a massive scale. 'Some were even contacted by Wonga for the loans they had not applied for and knew nothing about.Such offences are corrosive of the trust which people hold in the financial services sector. They are increasingly prevalent, they are easy to commit and hard to detect.'

The judge told Okusanya: 'You were described during the trial as the mastermind and one of the controlling minds of the whole of this fraud. I am satisfied that you were a leading member of a criminal enterprise which intended to get many millions of pounds.'

Eight others were convicted of laundering the proceeds of the cash through bank accounts under their control. Prosecutor Richard Hearnden told the court: 'The criminals netted over £3million by targeting one of Britain's most controversial institutions, the pay day lender Wonga. Wonga paid out on thousands of payday loans. Each of these loans was only for a few hundred pounds but added together these loans amounted to millions.

'The fraud came about by stealing the names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, mobile phone numbers and debit card numbers of literally thousands of ordinary members of the public.
'The fraudsters that were operating this scam probably bought ready-made lists of potential victims and their personal financial data.